Evidence For Posterity

Harvard's Nuremberg site counters Holocaust deniers.

by David Mehegan

Witnesses age and die, and events such as the sinking of the Titanic or the attack on Pearl Harbor become more the stuff of books and movies than of real life, at least to young people. That's true even of the Holocaust, the subject of a growing flood of film and fiction. From directors George Stevens (''The Diary of Anne Frank,'' 1959) to Roberto Benigni (''Life Is Beautiful,'' 1998) and Roman Polanski (''The Pianist,'' 2002), the need for a palatable story can sometimes smooth away the jagged edges of history.

But last week the Harvard Law School library began to put the raw, unvarnished evidence of the Nazi horror before anyone with a personal computer. On a new website called ''Nuremberg Trials Project: A Digital Document Collection'' (www.nuremberg.law.harvard.edu), the library is digitizing and posting 82,000 documents, totaling 650,000 pages, in its collection of 120,000 documents (more than 1 million pages) from the Nuremberg war crimes trials of 1946-49. Not all the documents in the files will be posted, only those used in the trials. When the project is done, anyone will be able virtually to attend the trials, hear the testimony, and examine the evidence.

The trial transcripts and trove of supporting documents help yank the rug out from under the Holocaust deniers.

More important, to some historians: The trial transcripts and trove of supporting documents help yank the rug out from under the Holocaust deniers.

''It's an unbelievably constructive use of the Internet,'' says Deborah E. Lipstadt, professor of Jewish studies at Emory University and author of ''Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory.'' ''Before, these materials were not accessible. You could never browse them. To put material of this magnitude and importance on the Internet is a great step forward.''

There were 13 trials at Nuremberg; the first, of such major leaders as Hermann Goering, was conducted by an international tribunal. The other 12, held by the United States with American civilian judges and American legal procedures, involved lesser defendants but no less heinous crimes. One was USA v. Karl Brandt, et al., the doctors' trial of 1946-47 with which the Harvard project begins. For the use of the numerous lawyers and judges, multiple photostats of original documents, translated documents, and transcripts of the trials were made. After the trials, the National Archives and several American law schools, including Yale, Columbia, and Harvard, received complete sets of the documents.

Harvard got two sets, in 680 boxes, which were compared and in some cases combined for completeness, and for more than 50 years they were kept in metal file cabinets, available to scholars. They were difficult to use, however, because there was no index (the National Archives' set had an index, but scholars had to use sometimes-deteriorated microfilm). Of greater concern was that the paper of the 1940s was cheap, acidic, and decaying fast. ''After half a century,'' says Harry Martin, Harvard's law librarian, ''they became stiff and began to fade, and we said, `We can't let people handle them any more because they are crumbling.' ''

By having the whole collection digitized by Harvard's Digitial Imaging and Photography Group, Martin and his team of about eight library staffers would solve several problems. They would protect the originals by taking them out of use and storing them in a climate-controlled repository, and they would make the digitized versions available to all interested citizens, not just qualified historians.

They also tackled a third problem -- the massive size and unwieldiness of the collection -- by creating a digital index, so one can quickly search for names, subjects, or events brought up in the course of the trials. The index contains a full explanation of each document: who wrote it and its significance in the trial. Some of the evidence includes appalling photographs taken by the doctors during and after their grisly experiments on human prisoners, marked with a ''graphic image'' warning in the database.

Starting at the home page, users can click ''search the collection,'' then insert a word such as ''altitude,'' and in a few clicks come to an index item for an English translation, used in court during the doctors' trial. It is an affidavit by Nazi doctor Brandt, Adolf Hitler's personal physician and Nazi commissioner for sanitation and health.

Another click and the faded, typewritten document itself appears. In the affidavit, Brandt describes the genesis of the horrifying experiments in which German, Polish, and Russian prisoners were subjected to agonizingly painful low-pressure chambers to find out how the human body tolerates high altitude, for the benefit of the German air force. Brandt's tone is bland and chilling.

The reader can also absorb the case chronologically, following the trial transcript, and where a document or exhibit is mentioned by counsel, clicking on a link to the document.

Harvard's is not the only such project, although its scale and its index make it the most ambitious. Yale has digitized and posted documents from the international tribunal, and Rutgers has done so with documents relating to persecution of minorities. The Holocaust History Project (www.holocaust-history.org), headed by Harry W. Mazal of San Antonio, Texas, is also scanning and posting vast numbers of documents.

Scholars say an important function of such projects is to confront the Holocaust deniers, whose influence conceivably could grow as eyewitnesses die off.

''The deniers use search engines and the Internet to good effect,'' says Deborah Dwork, author of several books on the Holocaust and director of the Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University in Worcester. ''Young people -- high school or college students -- who use search engines naively, often come to denier sites. Sites like Mazal's or Harvard's are extremely important in countering those sites, because they have the actual documentation.''

''It's hard to overestimate the importance of these documents.''

Still only in the early stages, the Harvard site has available about 7,000 pages, representing about a third of the doctors' trial. Martin hopes to have the whole trial online by the end of the year. Completing all the other trials will take as long as 10 years, he says -- assuming $6 million to $7 million can be raised. (The work thus far has cost about $200,000.)

''It's hard to overestimate the importance of these documents,'' says George J. Annas, professor of public health law at Boston University and coauthor, with Michael A. Grodin, of ''The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code.''

''They make these events much more immediate and real,'' Annas says. ''Some people might have a tendency to doubt these things really did happen. Even at the time, the trials didn't get much press in the United States. Many people just wanted to get back to civilian life. But even in the opening statement [in the doctors' trial], Telford
Taylor, the American prosecutor, says one reason we are doing this is to show the truth of these incredible events, not only to the German people, but to everyone, so that no one can ever doubt that they were fact and not fable.''

The opinions expressed in the comment section are the personal views of the commenters. Comments are moderated, so please keep it civil.

Visitor Comments: 3

(3)
Belle,
August 20, 2003 12:00 AM

keep an eye on the schools

Sites such as the ones mentioned in this article are ver important. Some states, such as Illinois, require that the Holocaust be taught but do not specify how or in what manner. It is not unusual for misguided teachers to emphasize the dramatic allure of the Nazi high command or to unknowingly send their students to search engines which may lead them to denier sites. Victim blaming is not unknown along with a general lack of knowledge about world history and the tenents of Judaism. Question your children and look over their readings and worksheets and do go in and question. You will be isolated but you should take your concerns to the next level.

(2)
Anonymous,
August 19, 2003 12:00 AM

A Chillingly important legacy

My father, a young man of 19 at the end of the war, served in a tank division in the Battle of the Bulge. He never spoke much about the war, but many members of his family (and mom's) died during the Shoah. I was impressed when he finally did tell us that he attended some of the trial(s) in Nuremberg but never really expanded upon what he'd seen and heard. His entire life was dedicated to Yiddishkeit. Thanks for providing links to this important site. I'm still haunted by the memory of my dad's experience as a boy.

(1)
Ruth Lowry,
August 18, 2003 12:00 AM

The world NEEDS to remember

In 1938 I was nine years old and knew nothing of what was going on outside of my childish world,safe and happy here in the U.S.A.
In Europe however,seeds of the Holocaust were being sown. I was fifteen when WWII ended. Only then did I hear of what happened to Europe's Jews. It was incomprehensible to my young mind. I continued on with my own life, so involved with my little slice of the world,I paid scant heed to anything else.
Now I am seventy four and world events, particularly concerning those descendents of Hitlers victims,in Israel, are much on my mind. Again millions of Jewish men, women,and children are threatened with extinction. Many have already gone the way of their ancestors; this time the method of their execution...being blown to bits with others,or being individually shot or stabbed___rather than gassed en masse. The world NEEDS to remember!

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My Christian friends are always speaking about “faith.” To me this sounds a lot like blind faith. Is that really the essence of religion?

The Aish Rabbi Replies:

I'm afraid that this is another case of a Christian concept being mis-associated with Judaism.

Let's first define our terms. What is faith?

Webster defines faith as "Belief without proof."

What is knowledge? "An acquaintance with truth, facts or principles through study or investigation."

Faith is usually a product of desire. Have you ever gotten a tip on the market that guarantees you're going to triple your money in a month? A lot of smart people have gotten fleeced because they ignored the evidence and went with their feelings.

Knowledge, on the other hand, is based on evidence. We know there's a place called China because we have too many products in our house saying "made in China." There's a lot of evidence for the existence of China, even though most of us have never been there.

Judaism unequivocally comes down on the side of knowledge, not faith. In Deuteronomy 4:39, the Torah says: "You shall know this day, and understand it well in your heart, that the Almighty is God; in the heaven above and the earth below, there is none other." (This verse is also contained in the prayer, "Aleynu.")

This verse tells us that it is not enough to simply know in your head, intellectually, that God is the Controller of everything. You must know it in your heart! This knowledge is much more profound than an intellectual knowledge. God gave us a brain because he wants us to think rationally about the world, our role in it, and our relationship with God.

A conviction based on desire or feelings alone has no place in Judaism. The Hebrew word "emunah," which is often translated as faith, does not describe a conviction based on feelings or desire. It describes a conviction that is based on evidence.

Once this knowledge is internalized, it effects how a person lives. A person with this knowledge could transform every breathing moment into a mitzvah, for he would do everything for the sake of the heaven. But this is not a "knowledge," that comes easily. Only intensive Torah learning and doing mitzvahs can achieve this knowledge. Every word of Torah we learn moves us just a little bit closer to that goal. And everyone is capable of that.

To learn more, read "The Knowing Heart," by Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (Feldheim.com). This entire book is an explanation of this verse!

In 350 BCE, the building of the second Holy Temple was completed in Jerusalem, as recorded in the biblical Book of Ezra (6:15). The re-building of the Temple had begun under Cyrus when the Persians first took over the Babylonian empire. The re-building was then interrupted for 18 years, and resumed with the blessing of Darius II, the Persian king whom is said to be the son of Esther. The Second Temple lacked much of the glory of the First Temple: There was no Ark of the Covenant, and the daily miracles and prophets were no longer part of the scenery. The Second Temple would stand for 420 years, before being destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE.

You shall know this day and consider it within your heart(Deuteronomy 4:39).

Business people who are involved in many transactions employ accountants to analyze their operations and to determine whether or not they are profitable. They may also seek the help of experts to determine which products are making money and which are losing. Such studies allow them to maximize their profits and minimize their losses. Without such data, they might be doing a great deal of business, but discover at the end of the year that their expenditures exceeded their earnings.

Sensible people give at least as much thought to the quality and achievement of their lives as they do to their businesses. Each asks himself, "Where am I going with my life? What am I doing that is of value? In what ways am I gaining and improving? And which practices should I increase, and which should I eliminate?"

Few people make such reckonings. Many of those that do, do so on their own, without consulting an expert's opinion. These same people would not think of being their own business analysts and accountants, and they readily pay large sums of money to engage highly qualified experts in these fields.

Jewish ethical works urge us to regularly undergo cheshbon hanefesh, a personal accounting. We would be foolish to approach this accounting of our very lives with any less seriousness than we do our business affairs. We should seek out the "spiritual C.P.A.s," those who have expertise in spiritual guidance, to help us in our analyses.

Today I shall...

look for competent guidance in doing a personal moral inventory and in planning my future.

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